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Christmas, 1913, found the good citizens of old Toronto fretting about the economy, muttering about the civic elections, wondering about the curious death of a Finnish maid, and bemoaning the state of drunkenness in the city.

For more than a few Toronto Daily Star readers the season must have seemed just a bit less buttoned-down and a bit edgier than usual.

It would be the last peaceful Yuletide before the murderous guns and poison gas of the Great War would engulf Canada and the Empire, upending the world forever. Already there were hints of the horror to come. Prime Minister Robert Borden, warning of “thunders and lightning on the horizon,” lobbied to spend a king’s ransom of $35 million on three massive Dreadnoughts for the navy. And Militia Minister Sam Hughes demanded $14 million for armouries, drill halls and the like.

Then there was the unsettling tragedy that befell Anna Yokinen, a 19-year-old Finnish maid at Victoria College – “a foreigner among us,” as the Star put it – who went out on the evening of Dec. 4, “morose and despondent,” disappeared, and was found dying 17 days later in a corn stook on a farm at Eglinton Ave. and Forest Hill Rd., just outside the city limits.

As Christmas drew near the Star featured a front-page picture captioned Scene of probable murder of Anna Yokinen, and an editorial mused grimly about her fate. But after Boxing Day a coroner’s jury came in with a more prosaic verdict. They ruled that Yokinen “probably became demented,” lost her way and “being of a retiring disposition” and speaking no English she failed to seek help. Instead she burrowed into the corn stook, tried to eat raw corn and succumbed to exposure and hunger.

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Many new Canadians could identify with her plight, in a menial job far from home, family and friends. On Christmas Eve the Star carried a front-page headline: Thousands without work in Toronto, over a story saying that as many as 10,000 in the “working class” sections of the city were jobless that holiday season. The Star’s Santa Fund provided gifts for 6,800 needy kids that year.

While the Prime Minister airily insisted that Canada was merely going through “growing pains” on the way to prosperity, the times felt tight and anxious. What the Star delicately referred to as “the current financial stringency” left many chasing down bargains at Eaton’s and Simpson’s with a fervor driven by privation.

Christmas trees could be had for $1. But there was a livelier market for modest Regina carpet sweepers at $12.50 apiece than upscale Hoover electric vacuums at a dizzy $45 a pop. Dad would be lucky to bag a Wilson Protector Briar pipe at $3, to help “reconcile him to this world of worry,” as the ad put it. And Mum would have to feign excitement over a $1.25 corset, featuring “rustproof boning, wide steels, four strong garters” and of course “an abdominal reducing strap.”

A set of high-end Victor skates for the rug rats at $2.75? Maybe, if Santa was in a good mood. But most families would take a pass on the $20 Victrola, the $17.95 Blue Wolf stole with “large heads, tails and paws,” the Domestic Treasure kitchen range at $37.45, and the 96-piece Limoges china dinner set at $11.95.

Politics, as always, was a tempting diversion. But even that had a frantic air that season.

The Star, not a paper to shrink from its convictions, pumped shamelessly for the re-election of reformist Mayor Horatio Hocken, an old friend. A headline fairly shouted Why Hocken Should be Mayor at its readers. It commended his “plain talk to plain people.” It dubbed him a “trust the people” man. And it savaged a rival newspaper “which hates him for private reasons.” And all this was on the news pages!

Hocken, like the Star, supported a new $22-million street railway that the newspaper described as a “bargain” for the city’s many hapless “straphangers.” But that Christmas season, some straphangers had more than the commute to keep them busy. The police courts seemed unusually busy.

Under the headline Knives and teeth used by foreigners, the Star reported that Michael Geopparin found himself on the wrong side of the law when he bit off Tony Crudill’s ear after accusing Cruddill of stealing his chestnuts. Meanwhile John Galloway and Albert Goddard were fined $2 each “for beating some foreigners.” And in juvenile court the father of Billy, a 6-year-old with “small ears and large eyes,” was fined $5 for bringing his boy to a beer den after the city’s 9 p.m. kids’ curfew. “This will take away my boy’s Christmas present,” his dad griped.

In one particularly busy scene a magistrate, faced with nearly 50 drunks, made what the Star called “a neat little Christmas box” by granting most of them discharges. The big exception was Alex Gillies, who offended the court “because he spoke to a lady he did not know” while deep in his cups. He got a stinging $5 fine.

Capping it all off Frank Johnston, who was running for office as a Toronto school trustee, was commended in court for putting his running skills to good use by chasing down Walter Flude, a miscreant who ran off with an “enormous prize turkey” from a grocery store on Christmas Eve. The judge gave Flude a choice: a $1 fine plus costs, or 30 days in jail.

Flude paid the fine so he could vote against Johnston in the election.

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